the Jaguar appeared in Ted hughes's first collection of 40 poems the hawk in the rain in 1957. in it Hughes paints a bleak picture of zoos back in the 1950s as he imagines a walk through one portraying most of the creatures there a spiritless and lethargic their captivity in an artificial environment reducing them to a life of enforced leisure none of these creatures is engaging in unnatural Behavior per se in the wild Apes groom each other to remove fleas and strengthen social bonds parrots shriek and posture on branches to communicate with one another big cats lie in the sun sleeping to restore their energy for hunting and boa constrictors coil themselves up for protection and heat conservation as well as crushing their prey what is unnatural however is the monotony of these behaviors the small amount of Barren Space in which they are cooped up means that other instinctive behaviors such as climbing flying prowling and running hunting and foraging for food and competing over scarce resources are either impossible or made redundant this deprives them of the ability to indulge their innate wildness and fulfill their Rays on debt the Captivity ultimately a self-defeating human exercise as miserable they provide neither an accurate snapshot of wild animals nor the entertainment for which the zoo's visitors are paying not so the Jaguar however whose raw and compelling presence draws them instead to his enclosure like a magnet the confines of the cage don't seem to have dampened the wildness of his nature in the slightest a creature who lives in his imagination he is neither bored nor imprisoned as the world rolls under the long thrust of his heel the way in which Hughes draws a parallel between the jaguar and the Visionary in his cell a person who has perhaps been imprisoned for having ideas ahead of his time that are not appreciated in the present seems to suggest that he may be employing the image of the Jaguar as a metaphor for the power and the untameability of the human imagination that refuses to be confined the poem comprises five quatrains or four line stanzas it doesn't have a fixed metrical or rhythmic structure Etc having said that however Hughes does employ other techniques to modulate the Rhythm each enchantment which he uses not only across line breaks but also across the transition between stanzas there's a rhyme scheme of a b b a for stanzas one to four and of a b a b for stanza 5. although this is very subtle because Rhymes are not always masculine or single which is where there is a rhyme on Final stressed syllables such as in stanza one with strut and nut and stanza 2 with ore and straw he also employs near rhyme such as freedom and come and sun and lion where there is a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable and half Rhyme or slant rhyme where there is consonants at the end of the words such as coil and wall and sell and heal forced or oblique rhyme such as fire and air and eyes and arrives other sound patterning techniques add to the poem's sense of cohesion and musicality such as alliteration EG bang of blood in the brain asinan CG yawn and adore consonants such as coil is a fossil sibilant CG stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw and combined alliteration and sibilance EG short Fierce fuse harsh guttural EG coil hissing's sibilant EG strut and forceful plosive EG Bang sounds predominate the word cage is repeated five times in total throughout the poem to highlight not only the artificial and man-made nature of the animal's captivity but also the unique nature of the Jaguar Spirit which refuses to acknowledge his confinement Hughes splits the poem almost exactly in half not introducing the subject of the poem The eponymous Jaguar until the third line of the third stanza this juxtaposing of his energy with the apathy of the other creatures serving to emphasize the difference between them he also skillfully exploits the present tense to emphasize in the first half the sense of hopelessness in the zoo to suggest the confining conditions which imprison these animals in a miserable Perpetual present but also in the second half the immediacy of the infinite World of the Jaguar's imagination the title the Jaguar is a simple one the use of the definite article the as opposed to the indefinite article a suggests that Hughes is not only talking about a specific Jaguar but is also using his observations to infer the qualities of jaguars in general and in a definitive manner it's interesting to note that the subject of the poem does not make an appearance until the latter half the description of the other animals first not only building up a sense of anticipation but also enabling through the stock contrast between them the depiction of the Jaguar's power and strength to be even more emphasized the poem begins with a simple description the Apes yawn and adore their fleas in the Sun already the long drawn-out vowel sounds of a or or an e enhance these primates sense of inertia and boredom as they seem unhealthily fixated on the parasites that they painstakingly remove from their body hair the short sentence which is end stopped suggests that their lives involve little more than this the way the parrots shriek as if they were on fire evokes how to the speaker's ears at least their cry is Harsh and jarring as though they are in extreme pain when they're not doing this they strut like cheap Tarts to attract the stroller with the nut hughes's use of the simile here creates a negative image of these tropical birds as he Likens their flamboyant plumage to the Brash and tachya attire and Gordy makeup of low rent prostitutes soliciting for trade as they try to get the attention of a stroller or casual passerby who is carrying a bag of peanuts paradoxically fatigued by indolence or made tired by the lack of stimulation from doing nothing tiger and lion lie still as the sun the simile here not only evokes the way in which they are motionless as the Sun appears static in the sky but also reminds us that they are not lying still in the sun of their natural hot environment of Africa the boa constrictor a large snake that crushes its prey to death is also inert it's coil a fossil not only does this metaphor evoke the visual form of an ammonite but also suggests that the snake appears petrified in its literal sense of being turned into stone perpetually asleep it's days of winding itself around its prey gone for good cage after cage seems empty the diacopi present in this image serving to evoke the seemingly never-ending and monotonous barrenness of the zoo as the visitors walk through it either the creatures are immobile and therefore difficult to spot well they are hidden fast asleep under their bedding the way the cage stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw suggests how the animals are forced to sleep in dirty enclosures amongst their own excrement the hissing sibilance here evoking its pungent odor the transferred epithet which transfers the adjective from the animal to whom it relates to the otherwise inanimate straw under which they are hidden effectively personifies it and consequently further removes the animal's sense of identity the stasis and lack of wildness exhibited by these animals is sufficiently Anodyne and sleep inducing that it might be painted on a nursery wall to lull babies and very young children to sleep the tone and pace of the poem pick up noticeably as we start the third stanza but who runs like the rest past these arrives at a cage where the crowd stands stairs mesmerized as a child at a dream note the way Hughes skillfully employs alliteration of the liquid in runs like the rest as well as both enchantment and suzura here to evoke the way in which the crowds hurry past these boring cages of inanimate creatures to come to a sudden halt in front of a particular cage the a synthetic triplet stands stairs mesmerized which forces the reader to pause after each word evokes its hypnotic appearance as the visitors become like children captivated by their sense of wonder and awe what they are staring at is a Jaguar hurrying in Rage through prison Darkness after the drills of his eyes on a short Fierce fuse the Jaguar is enraged or consumed by anger as it hurries through the metaphorical prison Darkness the metaphor that drills of his eyes evokes the way his own stare is piercing with the power to focus on and penetrate whatever falls under his gaze or the phrase a short Fierce fuse with its hissing sibilance and alliteration of the fricative sound evokes the burning and explosive energy in the Jaguar's eyes note how the enchantment across three lines here gives them a sense of momentum and conjures the energy and movement embodied by the Jaguar as he bursts in on the visitors and the reader's consciousness lines two and three of the fourth stanza are in parenthesis indicated by dashes at the end of lines one and three and thus constitute two embedded clauses the eye satisfied to be blind in fire by the bang of blood in the brain death the ear s uses the eye here as a synecdoche where a part is taken to represent the whole to allude to the jaguar in his entirety it seems that he is satisfied to be blind in fire as his vision is of his internal life rather than of his external physical surroundings not only this but he has deafened to external stimuli by the bang of blood in the brain note how the oral imagery evoked by the plosive alliteration of the Sounds here bring to mind the explosive pounding of the Jaguar's heart this additional information about the Jaguar's internal State gives the main Clause here context as we understand that unlike the other animals his behavior of spinning from the bars does not originate in boredom in the same way that a Visionary in his cell presumably imprisoned for having ideas and Visions for the future that threaten to upset the status quo is not trapped mentally as you cannot have the liberty of your thoughts and Imagination taken away from you there's no cage to the Jaguar either the final three lines of the poem comprise three distinct end-stopped Clauses and seem to emphasize that Jaguar's self-assurance his Spirit remains Unbroken his stride is wildernesses of freedom note that what is stride embodies is the antithesis of his physical surroundings of sterile and artificial confinement in his own imagination he is all-powerful able to move the world with the ease of an acrobat balancing on a ball the world rolls under the long thrust of his heel not only this but over the cage floor the horizons come The Horizon is one part of a landscape that always appears stable and static to The Observer no matter how fast he or she moves but in this image not only is it Dynamic but it also comes towards the Jaguar the plural form Horizons also suggesting its metaphorical meaning of new opportunities to hint at the power the Jaguar has to control its own destiny within the infinite realm of its imagination thanks 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